Koll on a Roll

Lisa Koll was thinking, "Why not?" She was running the biggest race of her life, the 10,000m at the U.S. Olympic trials in June. About 10 laps in, Shalane Flanagan, the American record holder, surged and broke from the pack. Koll, a 20-year-old in her third year at Iowa State University, was running her fifth 10K ever. Maybe she should hang back, not get in over her head.

But Koll had been going for it all season, and it seemed to work out just fine. In April, she surprised even herself by setting an American collegiate 10,000m record of 32:11 at the Stanford Invitational. A few weeks later, she won the NCAA 10,000m by a minute. Talk about a breakthrough. Just last year, Koll had a 10K personal best of 35:36.

At the Olympic trials, she decided to mix it up with the nation's finest. She covered Flanagan's move and sent a message: The future of American distance running may well be a spunky 5-foot-4 redhead from Iowa. "Make the Olympic team, set American records -- I want to do it all," Koll said a few days before her trials race. "The sky's the limit."

She remained optimistic even after finishing a distant eighth (33:09.87) at the trials, fading after her gutsy surge. Sure, she could have sat back and placed higher. But then she wouldn't have given herself a chance to make the Olympic team.

"It doesn't surprise me that she's running so fast," says Tim Hanson, her high school coach. "It does surprise me that she's running so fast so soon." The question is, how did she do it?

Koll grew up in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and started running after entering local road races with her dad. At Fort Dodge High School, she improved gradually, clocking 10:16 for 3,000m. She never won a state title. What became clear, Hanson says, was that the longer the race, the better she was. And no matter whom she was training with -- even guys on the team -- she never backed down.

Corey Ihmels, Iowa State's coach, met Koll for the first time at a cross country camp before her senior year. "I recruited her pretty hard," he says, "not because she was the most talented. I just thought she was a good kid who would work hard."

The turning point came during winter break her freshman year, when she injured her IT band. Koll realized that she desperately wanted to be an elite runner but hadn't been committed. Kiel Uhl, her boyfriend and fellow Iowa State freshman, had just won the junior cross country nationals and finished 36th at the world championships in Japan. He was blunt: "I told her, 'You're not doing enough to get there.'"

Koll may not have liked the message, but she listened. No more staying up late talking to friends on the phone. No more missing morning runs. That summer, she followed the training plan Ihmels wrote for the men's team. "If you don't live the lifestyle 24 hours a day, seven days a week," she says, "you're not doing all you can."

The records didn't come immediately. Koll had a solid cross country season last fall (18th at NCAAs) and an even better indoor season (second in the NCAA 5,000m). Then came Stanford. In only her second 10,000m race, she tucked in behind soon-to-be-Olympian Magdalena Lewy Boulet. Every lap, Ihmels yelled, "You're good," and every lap, she wondered how long it could feel so easy. With 2 miles left, she looked over at Ihmels and decided to make a move.

With two laps to go, Koll heard the meet announcer say that she was on pace to break the American collegiate record. Wow, she thought. Neither she nor Ihmels had known that the record was 32:18, set in 2004 by Alicia Shay. Koll surged past Blake Russell (who, like Lewy Boulet, would make the U.S. marathon team two weeks later in Boston) into the lead and won by more than 3 seconds. Her second half -- 15:52 -- matched her best indoor 5,000.

A few weeks later at NCAAs, held at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, she proved Stanford wasn't a fluke. Just 90 miles from her hometown, on a track where she never won a race in high school, she ran 32:44 and lapped most of the field. "It was the best day of my life," she says. "I couldn't wipe the smile off my face the last three laps."

How did Koll rise from obscurity to stardom? By logging month after month of hard training, testing her limits last summer by running 90 miles a week. And by doing tons of strength work: 6-mile tempo runs and 1,000m repeats (at about 3:10 each) with minimal rest (75-second jog). "The runners who are really successful at a high level are the guys and gals who can really be consistent over time," says Ihmels. "That's Lisa Koll. She hasn't had any interruptions to her training."

Couple that with her competitiveness. "Her talent is her toughness and grittiness and not being afraid to lay it on the line," says Ihmels. Uhl, her boyfriend, agrees: "She works harder than anyone I know, by far." Says Grace Kemmey, Koll's training partner at Iowa State, "Sometimes I tell her I wish I had the heart that she has."

After the Stanford meet, Koll, Kemmey and Ihmels went to an In-N-Out Burger for dinner. Koll reveled just as much in Kemmey's new personal best as her own collegiate record in the 10,000m. "That speaks volumes about her character," says Ihmels.

Koll earned a degree in biology from Iowa State this spring after three years, thanks to a full course load and credits from high school. (Her GPA: 3.98, with a B+ in freshman chemistry the only "blemish" on her record.) This fall, she starts classes at Iowa State's College of Veterinary Medicine. She spent the summer isolating a gene in lambs that will help researchers study respiratory diseases.

Koll faces another puzzle: Should she redshirt cross country this fall? She has one cross country season left and two in indoor and outdoor track. Redshirting would give her a chance to build a base again before racing. And she thinks fall 2009 may be the best chance the Iowa State women have to qualify for nationals the first time as a team. (At press time, she hadn't yet decided.)

In the meantime, she has plenty of work to do. Racing at the trials "fueled the fire for the next four years," Koll says. (She's never been more jealous of anyone, she admits, than the 10K qualifiers going to Beijing.)

But the trials also exposed her weakness: She doesn't yet have the speed to challenge the best in the country. She ran 2:23 for 800 meters -- her fastest high school time -- matching Flanagan's surge at the trials, a move that broke her. Ihmels says they'll work on preparing her for races with pace changes and big negative splits. Eventually, Koll thinks, the marathon may be her best event.

As she ran the trails around the Iowa State campus during the summer, Koll might have had trouble believing how far she'd come so quickly. For his part, Uhl admits that things have come full circle since he gave her that inspirational speech freshman year. "She's the one doing the inspiring now," he says.

Koll's Breakthrough Tips

Iowa State's Lisa Koll had a stunning breakthrough 10,000m at Stanford this spring, her 32:11 American collegiate record more than three minutes faster than her previous personal best. She also won the event by nearly a minute at the NCAA outdoor meet in June and ran well at the Olympic trials. Here are some of her tips on how to engineer your own breakthrough.

Decide what you want from running. If you want to run mostly for fitness and fun, that's fine, she says. But if you want to be competitive, dedicate your life. Create a routine for training and sleep and stick to it. Especially rest up for workouts.

Be patient. Running 80 miles the week after you log 40 will lead to injury, she says. Make a gradual progression with your training. She's discovered that keeping her mileage steady and taking a day off every few weeks works better than varying her mileage from week to week.

Persevere. Every so often you'll reach a plateau. Keep training. Nothing's going to happen on its own. You have to make it happen, she says.

Don't limit yourself. Specific goals are great. But you also have to be open to exceeding your expectations. After Stanford, Koll says, she'll never again put a limit on what she can accomplish.

Running log: Here's a glance at Lisa Koll's workouts in the three weeks leading up to her American collegiate record in the 10,000m.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Runner's World participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.